Seb and Silent Mom

I am not a cosplayer. Frankly, figuring out who I’m supposed to look like as my own self is difficult enough these days – that hugely fat, grouchy faced stranger in the mirror is NOT the me who lives in my head. Anyway, some weeks ago Sebastian came to me all dithery over something he’d seen on Kevin Smith’s twitter feed…

Kevin Smith? Director, screenwriter, and half of a duo of recurring characters who appear in almost all of his movies. As the starship Enterprise is the axis upon which the Star Trek universe revolves, so Jay and Silent Bob are for the View Askew universe. A pair of weed dealers who lean against walls in various locations in New Jersey and provide comic relief, continuity, an odd sort of moral philosophy, and occasionally a deus ex machina  for the nerd boys and garrulous slackers who populate Kevin Smith’s foul-mouthed yet romantic cinematic slices of life. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of ‘Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash’ – the real life comic book shop and home base for the AMC reality show ‘Comic Book Men’ – Kev and company were throwing a party. Not just a party but an assemblage of enough Jay and Silent Bob cosplayers to break the Guinness Book World Record of Jay and Silent Bobs in one place.

This is us. I am on the extreme far left leaning against the fence with my elbow. If you can’t pick me out, no worries, it was wiggy enough to be IN this crowd. Sebastian made an excellent Jay, btw. A nearly note-perfect get-up and quote source. It was gratifying to see my son so animated and engaged! Life with Mom and Mick isn’t lively. Work, chores, school, the occasional movie, meh. So the opportunity to jaunt off with my kid to do something wacky and strange was GREAT! The 2+ hour drive made in the wee sma’s in a fricken MONSOON, the make-up and 15lb leather trench coat, the endless standing and queueing, fuh, all worth it. Sebastian was over the moon! And that, even without the delight of interacting with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as a fan myself, oy, my son’s joy was priceless.

Once your kids are grown the opportunities to do cool shit with them drop to nearly zero. Thanks to Sebastian’s peculiar (?), exhausting, okay…fucking BRUTAL early years he and I missed out on many, many memory making moments. So to be invited along to something like this? A mile marker on Seb’s lifeline? Yeah, screw the 3:00am departure time, the frightening torrential downpour, the parkway tolls, and construction detours, and the physical punishment…….I did something FUN with my son!

For that I’d endure anything.

 

Heh.

In the setting up and importing pics and formatting this entry I needed Sebastian’s help. The frustration and outright disgust from him! I don’t understand why he’s so angry. For real. I am sooo sorry I don’t understand how to do these ‘simple’ things. Silly stupid me wasting brain space on 54 years of memories, history, science, experience, and dopey shit like recipes, movie and book plots, music, current events, how to drive a stick shift, first aid, stats, culture, how to weight a ceiling fan so it doesn’t wobble, HIS ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE, the infield fly rule, DMV requirements in NY, paleontology, comparative religions, how to crochet mittens and sear sea scallops, Steve Buscemi’s public biography, the fees and operating hours of the Walden Humane Society animal shelter, how to identify and treat Lyme disease, Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics, etc, etc, etc…

My hard drive is so, so, so full.

I would truly like to believe that Sebastian’s distress is simply the gap between his view and mine. But having been married to his father and knowing firsthand the Aspie disconnect between THEIR feelings and assessments and those of us on the accepted ‘normal’ scale I know my younger son is ‘off’. I get it. Sebastian and those on his spectrum are a one-way street. YOU do for them, they do NOT do for you.

This sucks. It sucks big time.

What? Are those who interact with the autistic automatically nominated for sainthood? Is our need for a social quid pro quo…gosh, is it always to be forfeit?

Interacting with the autistic is hard cheese all around? Tough shit?

I object.

I am NOT saying the autistic are unworthy of love. Nor am I advocating they be punished for behaviors they cannot help. All I ask is those who don’t skew as ‘different’ have some compassion. I just spent quite a bit of time describing an adventure and how grateful I was to have shared it with my kid and BOOM! Within minutes he shamed and hurt me and sucked away all the happiness I had from our time together Saturday. Because I wasn’t ‘perfect’. Nevermind HE’S not perfect; all that counts to Aspies is how everyone else disappoints them.

Take a day off from work? No. Assemble a decent costume and spend $17 on contour sticks and eyebrow pencils to fake a beard? No. Get up at 2:30am? No. MapQuest and navigate the 112 miles between here and Red Bank, New Jersey? No. Pay for tolls, gas, and parking? No. Get sopping wet while parking the car and then stand in line for four and a half hours in an intermittent drizzle without coffee or food (IBS issues) and maintain smile and enthusiasm? No. Sign legal documents and then be herded into a holding pen to stand around for another 3 hours cheering on command and providing ‘B’ roll for camera guys? No. On and on. Not once did I allow my physical distress and boredom show. Because I love Sebastian and only wanted him to have the best memories of this crazy goofy thing we did together. BUT because I asked for help with a blog post and was less than a star pupil about some computer crap IT’S ALL RUINED and I’M A SUCKY PERSON!

See how this goes with them? Mike the ex, Alex the elder son, and now Sebastian the younger son? They demand the impossible and give NOTHING in return. And I’m supposed to be okay with this. More so, grateful. Then if I exhibit frailty or confusion or any need of my own…ka-BLAM! I’m dead. I’ve become an enemy and a shit and a betrayer.

I am so tired of this. Do NOT talk to me about ‘accepting’ and fucking ‘celebrating’ the autistic and their ‘unique’ perspective. Their ‘unique’ perspective is soul crushing and endlessly painful. It requires sacrifice beyond the impossible. It demands you give and give and give and are immediately punished for anything less than saintly perfection and complete self abnegation.

All I wanted was to do a cool thing with my kid and make a happy blog post about it.

How foolish of me.

I did, however, help set a world record and sometime next season will be on an episode of ‘Comic Book Men’. I even get an IMDB credit out of it.

 

Pained, humiliated, and struggling to make a feast from scraps as usual, ~LA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things That Rhyme With ‘Ohs’

“Where do you get your pedicures?”

This being the question I put to several co-workers last week. About half the time the reply was the name of this salon or that. The other half garnered me such incredulous looks as if I’d asked, “Do you eat boogers?” or “Where do you perform human sacrifice?” The former acted with such revulsion! “Let someone touch my feet? YUCK!” And the latter found the question so beyond their experience I might as well have been asking about ritual murder. “Pedicures? Is that even a thing?” Their confusion and astonishment made me want to pat them soothingly and make the scary question go away.

The only reason I was asking is because I’d foolishly invited my sister to join me at a nail salon for that most girly bonding experience- the adjacent pedicure. Hey, I was scrambling for something to do which would let us talk…but in a public enough space to avoid any true intimacy. Keeping my dippy hot mess of a sister and her Lifetime channel dramatic life at arm’s length from my hard won tidy peace and happy family is necessary. Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s in no big rush to have her judgmental difficult bossypants sister all up in her biz either. Gidget was glad enough for an activity to share. In the end we met up at my usual nail place, whereupon we both sprang for the ‘spa’ pedicure and I held it together when Gidget did the “Only you, Leelee” eye roll as I caught up with Jon and asked after his family in my rudimentary Vietnamese. Ditto when I got another eye roll and condescending smirk when I said something to her about my bee meadow.

See? This is why I’ve absented myself from my crummy family for so many years. Imagine the fury I felt at being smirked at for conversing with my favorite nail tech in his native language, and being scorned for making a habitat for bees! You know, the pollinators for 75% of our fricken FOOD? But to my ignorant dipwit sister I’m an object of mirth and scorn for doing ‘weird’ shit like teaching myself Vietnamese and doing something useful like planting flowers and housing bees.

On one hand I couldn’t care less, but on the other it’s maddening to be smirked at and mocked by a stupid person. It’s like trying to deal with Trump voters. Yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force here, but it’s small solace.

So. Zero points and half a bottle of Tums to me on the topic of ‘toes’.

I had more but I’m too grouchy now.

 

Good night, Lovies. ~LA

Music in the Dark

Not too long ago a co-worker on her break waved me over to where she was sitting in the café. The store’s café is a small cluster of tables and a sometimes working coffee machine that demands $1.50 for a cup of the lousiest coffee outside of an interstate rest area’s volunteer-run ‘refreshment stop/local fundraiser’. Adjacent to the produce section, the customer service counter, and the time clock the café is a handy place to take your 15 minute break. (A wildly generous rest period demanded by labor law and our union if you’re working a 4-6 hour shift. Personally I’ve found 15 minutes is just enough time to eat a tangerine, drink 16 oz of water, and for my knees to stiffen up, but whatever. 15 minutes is better than none at all.) Anyway, my co-worker knew I’d been off for a couple days thus missed the latest edict and she wanted to save me some grief. Berries- straw, blue, black, and rasp must now be bagged in those flimsy but convenient plastic bags from the produce department. Seems the berry packages regularly sprang open spilling gushy wayward berries everywhere and were a pain in the patootie to clean up, to say nothing of the financial loss to our already microscopically slim profit margin. I already bagged berries for just that reason but thanked my co-worker nicely for the head’s up. She stuttered and stumbled and apologized and wanted me to know that she had NOT been criticizing or bossing, also that she hadn’t been trying to get over on me or was out to make me feel bad about how I do my job.

What the heck?

When I was finally able to get a word into her torrent of apologies and explanations I basically shouted her name to get her attention. Startled by my volume she quieted.

“Sweetie, be easy! You are one of the kindest people I know. I would never assume you were being ugly or were out to make me feel bad! Sha, okay? Thank you for the help. For true. You are just being a good friend! Why would you think I’d take your advice any other way?”

Stunned, she blinked rapidly and tried to adjust to the idea she had NOT been found at fault nor did I hate her.

Sigh…

This scenario above all others has cost me so much trouble.

Listen up….I am NOT judging you!

Call me naïve. Call me simple. But I’m not sitting back assigning ulterior motives and harsh assessments about what you say and do. Perhaps it’s foolish (and sometimes it has been, much to my chagrin) but I take you at your word and I always go with the assumption that you’re doing your best with the kindest intention and the most generosity of spirit and heart.

To think and act otherwise hurts ME. And this I will not do. I’ve had quite enough pain in my life, thankyouverymuch, and I don’t ever voluntarily sign up for more. I also spent much of my life being beautiful and Lord almighty does the world love to believe all beautiful women are selfish assholes. HA! For one thing I didn’t even know I was beautiful until I wasn’t anymore. And for another forever being misunderstood and misinterpreted has made me acutely aware exactly how much that sucks, so I’m willing to step into a briar patch sometimes. A few, not very many, but a few people DO mean to hurt, to cheat, to sucker the gullible, and to claw out their shoddy ‘advantages’ by making others their dupes and stupes. But most folks are okay. Trying hard and are generally decent. The shitty people are rare enough for me to ignore and feel sorry for when I do stumble across one.

I am NOT saying, “Oh look at me and my saintly attitude!” Bottom line is that being suspicious and sour is exhausting. Frankly? I simply don’t have the energy. I’m not selfish in that I seek to maneuver advantage over you so I get the goodies, but I AM selfish with my time, with how much brainpower and energy I’ll devote to you and your motives. Just not up for Machiavellian intrigues and have zero patience for those who do operate that way.

I am willing to extend out what I expect back.

 

 

It’s just that simple, ~LA

 

Out There vs In Here

At work I am asked quite often if I’m on Facebook. Co-workers and even a few customers I’ve become friendly with have asked to friend me. My answer is always the same, “Yes I’m on Facebook but I’m only FB friends with people I cannot see in person easily.” Most accept this and understand when I elaborate for me FB is where I get to hang with the dear ones that geography makes imposs to see in the flesh. Which is most certainly true, but it’s not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

I have exactly ONE work friend I see in what I call my ‘real life’. Dar is an empathic, touch healing, Bugs Bunny and Augie Doggie quoting, kids 13 years apart soul sister. The first time our eyes met we knew we were kin. I ‘saw’ her and she ‘saw’ me and our friendship was cemented before we’d learned each other’s last names. We’re so connected we’re not even spooked by how much our lives run parallel. That’s simply how it is when you meet a member of your tribe.

As for the other great folk at work? I like them. A lot. But they live in the part of my life where I wear an ugly shirt and a name tag. This doesn’t mean I care less for them than I do my other friends, only that there’s a necessary boundary. Necessary for my comfort and to feel safe. Y’all get how vital feeling safe is for me. I don’t care to invest the energy or open my backstory enough to share with my co-workers. Nor do I care to have their business all up in mine when I’m off the clock. Took a long time for me to get the confidence to compartmentalize my life. Doormats feel like they owe everyone everything. Feh. So saying, “No” was/is an act of courage.

Besides I mean what I say, my online life is (to make a dated pun)…MYspace.

I’m rolling up on almost two decades of having a pixel life. I found out later that Alex hated it, but Sebastian knows no other way and to him my online circle is simply a bunch of aunts, uncles, and cousins he doesn’t get to see at holidays. Your names are as familiar as his actual blood rellies and he likes you quite a bit more. He’s pleased and proud when you “ooo!” and “ahh!” over his pics and milestones. I probably overshared in the beginning (hence the Alex hate) but Sebastian is a true Millennial and posts pics of himself pumping gas into his truck and what he’s having for breakfast, sharing himself online is his normal.

I, on the other hand, have curated my virtual life. At least once I was finished barfing up all the hateful dirty emotional water I was drowning in. Oy, my old journal was rough. From 2001 to 2007 reading my diary was to risk emotional flash burns. Taylor Negron had a routine involving going out for pie and the waitress unloading a big upchuck of her personal problems before taking his order and his response was, “Ow! That left an emotional skidmark! All I wanted was something lemony.”

Reading my D-Land diary was like that. Come for meringue, leave with scorch marks.

Anyway, the main gist of this post is to define how I’m doing this blog and FB these days. I’ve gotten more than a few snarky jabs at how little I comment on the news since the election. Intellectually I understand I don’t owe any justifications but it hurts anyhow. To be thought a slacker and a do-nothing really, really smarts. Not the shit from haters but the snark and pointed remarks from friends has finally driven me to say something.

#1- I live in New York. A state that went solidly for Hillary. My senators are both Democrats and are the sponsors and/or loud supporters of all things decent and humane in the Senate right now. Schumer and Gillibrand are awesome. My Congressional representative is Sean Patrick Mahoney. An openly gay lawyer who’s an adoptive parent to three children. Randy Florke, Sean’s husband, is someone I’ve met several times during my more active days as a clean water advocate. Randy and Sean are both great dads and genuinely nice guys. I send my rep and senators regular mail both snail and electronic. I contribute to their campaigns. My state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, is also a Democrat. He’s the son of Mario Cuomo, another Democrat. I live in a sanctuary state and one of the first to reject Trump’s dopey withdrawal and independently re-upped with the Paris Climate Agreement. What, exactly, should I be excoriating my elected reps for? They, and I, are doing the Right Things.

#2- My FB friends list is really, really short. 62, as a matter of fact, and 5 of those people are dead. (I cannot bear to delete them.) My FB friends are truly friends. My gang, posse, tribe. Should I be near enough in geographical space I could call any one of them and we’d be hugging in no time. Grabbing a coffee, sharing a meal, and in most cases being tucked up in their guest room or on the couch in the den without a qualm and zero weirdness over making the transition from pixel to physical. Except maybe to marvel how great it was to actually hear their voice in person. (I’ve been told many times when making the leap from screen to flesh that I sound EXACTLY like I write. It’s true. My New Yawk accent isn’t as juicy as Bugs Bunny’s but I sure as hell wouldn’t ever be mistaken for a Minnesotan or a southerner.) Anyhoodle, those 50+ dear ones sprinkled around the globe are real friends and as such we share most of the same values and concerns. Posting news, especially about the political outrages, is to be preaching to the choir. We ALL care about the same things from mostly the same perspective. The people I love are doing their bit as am I. It’s not that I am ignoring the larger sphere, only that I feel it’s unnecessary to harp on it. In my tiny and very, very personal corner of FB it’s about the individual accomplishments and troubles. Book reviews, birthdays, soliciting sponsors for charity 5Ks and silent auctions. It’s about wedding anniversaries and backyard garden harvests. It’s pics of the grandkids and my friends’ latest work-in-progress.

So no. I do NOT feel compelled to hector, chide, shout, and rage all the damn time. In fact I’d appreciate it if the twitting and snarky shit toward me stopped on my FB feed. I understand the frustration and sorrow, believe me, the world’s shitstorm hurts me too. I do not forget injustice as I drive my unremarkable momsy crossover late-model Rogue with my white middle-aged female self to my union protected job at the regularly Health Department inspected grocery store. Nor do I fail to appreciate my little grandma house with its working heat/central air and its clean well water and wholly functioning appliances. I understand that not all mothers have reasonable assurance their sons will come out of a traffic stop alive. I work and write and vote and even intervene where I can to ensure the safety of ALL the sons. And the daughters.

You never have to remind me. For all of my life’s sorrows I never, ever, ever forget how good I have it. And I never stop learning and growing so my eye becomes ever more inclusive and sees where I can be of use. Until the day you can honestly say I am an uncaring, know-nothing noogie….

 

Thanks. Needed to get this off my chest. ~LA

 

Hash

I made corned beef hash once from scratch. Mick went bonkers over it and declared there was none better. Yet when I make boiled Irish he refuses to leave enough corned beef for me to make hash again. He insists that the boiled dinner is simply too yummy to stop short of a groaning distended bellyful. There’s some kind of life lesson in there about the wisdom of putting off present pleasure for later joy or some such but frankly I can’t be bothered to suss it out.

‘Hash House’ is the name of Kiki Kavanaugh’s theater in Judith Krantz’s ‘Princess Daisy’. A book I’ve read at least a couple dozen times. I do not scorn ‘chick lit’ and romance novels pro forma as a feminist. In fact I loathe the pink ghetto of ‘chick lit’ and ‘chick flicks’. Why is escapist fantasy gendered anyhow? But it is. Boy howdy, it is. And if we are to adhere to the gendered tropes, why are male fantasies (suave spies, heroes of every stripe from incorruptible Old West sheriffs to loveable rogues to Terminator-esque vigilantes), why are they okay if women’s are not? Why is a Xena or Cinderella or Hermione Granger or Princess Daisy such a smirk-worthy, disrespected object of mirth? Without the steady profits from romance series and cozies most print publishing houses would be dead broke within months. That ‘laughable’ chick lit and those ‘too cute’ cozy mystery stories are what keep print companies in the black! And yet only the books about and by men get respect and the goddamn front table at B&N. Gah!

Hashish isn’t wholly unknown to me, but it’s not a beloved favorite either. In the late 70s weed was so ubiquitous that it was never necessary to hunt down a high. And truly when I smoke(d) it wasn’t about how high I could get or the so-called ‘purity’ of the high. Weed is for relaxing. It’s to feel hungry enough to eat when my self-loathing and my various eating disorders are bullying me to starve and feel virtuous about it. Weed is to prompt the creativity and the libido. So hash was never a biggie. Expensive. Complicated. Bleh. I do not care for either of those. Plus the idea of getting too high is scary to me. To be wrecked beyond my ability to control the situation is stupid. It invites all manner of insults and encroachments. Unlike Blanche DuBois, I never want to depend on the kindness of strangers. At least not when I’m vulnerable. So, hash? Nah.

Hashtags. For one thing this # is a pound sign. Its purpose is to close a series of numbers when dealing with telephone octopuses. “Please enter your 85 digit serial number followed by the pound sign.” Also I don’t tweet. I’ve signed up for Twitter twice and lost interest before the first hour both times. I don’t mind brevity, I appreciate the concise. It’s the stinking IMMEDIACY of Twitter. “Pay attention! Right now! Notify 1,598 of your closest friends about this NOW!” What? Really? I’d like to think on this, and check sources, and anyhow I’ve ‘spoken’ to everybody I’m electronically connected with already today. Can this keep until tomorrow? “NO! RETWEET THIS NOW GODDAMNIT! IT’S FUCKING IMPORTANT!”  This is what Twitter feels like to me. It’s a gun pressed to my temple. I hate it.

Definition 2 for ‘hash’ in Merriam-Webster is: to talk about :  review —often used with over or out hash over a problem hashing out their differences. This is my favorite. Very few things satisfy me as much as consensus. Which is not the same as capitulating or total agreement. Consensus means all the angles and all the possibilities have been looked at and extrapolated out to logical conclusions. Then a course of action is agreed upon. It might not be exactly anyone’s perfect solution but it’s the one that makes the most sense and does the most good (or least harm) for pretty much everyone involved. And to reach a consensus there must be a hashing out. Yes, there must be thrashing about. Yes, there must be odd sidebars and tangents. Yes, sharp blades and high heat are involved. But eventually everything is diced enough, enough potatoes and onions and spices and butter are put in, and then all the things are pressed down together against the heat and the end result is delicious. It’s crusty and tender and spicy and chewy and fucking satisfying. Because it’s hash. Nobody gets the whole thing but everybody gets something. And together it makes more than its disparate parts, and more than it had been before all the dicing and slicing and mixing and heat.

I like that. I like it a lot.

 

Much love from your hungry friend, ~LA

June

I used to have a friend named June. It’s a nickname. Her birthday is in February and her actual name is Mayumi. ‘June’ isn’t an Anglicized thing either. She got her handle from following her dad around on his rounds as a caretaker/carpenter- it’s the career he took on after retiring from the Army. Wee Mayumi would tote a hammer or carry a paper bag of nails or wrestle with an air filter almost larger than she was and trot along in his wake. Where her dad was Mayumi was too. So much so that people started calling her ‘Junior’. Eventually ‘Junior’ became ‘Junie’ then ‘June’. A name she adopted full-time after her father passed on. Not dismissing her Japanese heritage so much as hanging onto her beloved Anglo father.

She and I didn’t have a huge blow-up, btw. My friend June was a reason or season friend, I haven’t decided which.

I’m sure if I tracked her down she’d be glad to hear from me. We’d have a burst of emails and then drift apart again. And that’s okay. Like marriages, sometimes friendships have a set duration.

Recently at the Danbury Fair Mall I shared an elevator with a Little Person. I don’t know which type of dwarfism she has nor is it relevant except to say she was tiny. So small I mistook her dash to catch the elevator as the heedless sprint of a runaway baby and instinctively hit the ‘hold door’ button and put my hands out to catch her. (It’s a mom thing.) Making the transition from seeing a runaway baby to a grown-ass woman was quick, thank goodness. So instead of asking her where Mommy was I asked if this was her usual mall and if so could she direct me to the Lush store? (#1 on my hit list and frankly only reason for trekking to Danbury, Connecticut.) She obliged readily. The Lush store was exactly where she said it was and I waved and said thanks before hustling off to bath product nirvana.

Later that night I thought about that brief conversation. Lord knows I’ve complained often enough about my size. And I am. I am taller, larger around, have far bigger boobs, and totally non-dainty feet.  However because all my bits are proportionate with the others I am not so far outside the usual as to cause stares and polite discomfort. I’m just BIG.

The woman in the elevator had no such leeway and grace space. Navigating, hell, just being in this world is rough for her because things are sized for the average person. But being tiny is also her normal. And that’s the key. The element that most people overlook. Especially the people who are trying to be decent and correct and nice. If you are small or you are big, your own perspective is always the way the world looks to you. My ‘normal’ is tilting my head down. A little, a lot, whatever. 95% of the folk I interact with are shorter than I am. I tilt my head, I reach things down, most of the time the size differential is no big. Nor is it to my elevator acquaintance. Looking UP is her normal. Pity is ridiculous.

Take it this way. “Oh, poor you, needing oxygen to process glucose, and needing Vitamin D from sunlight!”

Dumb, right? ‘Normal’ is relative.

That’s all I have.

 

Your dopey friend, ~LA

It Don’t Come Easy

I’ve given myself an hour. Sebastian is expected home a few minutes after my deadline  and Mick a quarter hour after that. So an hour is what I have. The title of this entry is a quote from my favorite Beatle, Ringo. Why Ringo? He’s not especially talented nor does he excel at craft (he’s the ONLY drummer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who can’t do a drumroll) but Ringo has two things- gratitude and an easy breezy way with the public and the press. A mindset and a skill I find wholly relatable.

 

 

‘If you’re big enough to take it.’

It’s been rough lately. Money is tight. Family (the ex, MIL, SIL, absent child) are lobbing grenades. My trip overseas is delayed and uncertain for the most harrowing of reasons. (Am I even going? Doubtful. And British Airways crazily wants to keep ALL of the ticket purchase.) “Why, of course, BA, I’m delighted to DONATE $1,378 to you for transportation I won’t use! It’s not like I could pay bills with that money! Or do anything else with it! You just go ahead and keep 5 months’ of paychecks, a mighty corporation like you can certainly use the dough more than an hourly numb-nuts like me can!”

Fuck you, British Airways. Fuck you for keeping my money and for not understanding that sometimes Life has its own agenda. I’m certain my friend who was going to give me a bed is far more concerned about your quarterly profits than her firstborn dying. Ye gods.

Work? What a joy. Hours are cut. My boss has gone whack-a-doo again and makes my workday a tottering anxiety fest. And now that we’re coming up on the hot months every goddamn order has 3+ cases of WATER. “Yo! You have been suckered! You do NOT need to purchase bottled water! The shit you buy is the SAME exact water that comes out of your TAP!”

For real.

Stop being Coca-Cola’s dupe. Stop spending your extremely hard-earned coin on bottled water. Get a reusable bottle (ie: a grown-up’s sippy cup) and fill that thing from your TAP. For real. It’s the same damn water only it’s free.

Would I lie to you? Or steer you wrong? No. If you were in danger from pollutants or whatever, I’d tell you. Use your tap water, my friends. It’s all good. Unless you’re in Flint.

Recently I’ve had people on the sales floor tell me they’d use our service but they didn’t want to ‘get stuck with BAD FOOD’. I was appalled. These misguided people would elaborate about how we’d pass off cold cuts, meats, and produce that were about to expire and/or covered in bruises and brown spots.

REALLY????

Shop From Home isn’t the drive-thru at McD’s, you knuckleheads, our service is all about having repeat customers. It’s about bringing our clients THE BEST our store has to offer. I’ve assured dozens of inquisitive potential customers that my clients get far better produce and meat than my family does. Stone truth.

Lyme, Lyme, Lyme…

Yes, I am battling my way out of Lyme round 4 (5?). In any case I am tired and frustrated. Sebastian is doing great. His course of antibiotics passed swiftly and without major side-effects. Me? Not so much. Every joint in my body is aching and I’m am honestly exhausted. Better me than my kid, but fuck Lyme in all its incarnations.

This is where I’m at. Along with a bacterial infection that leads to chronic illness I’ve had to push back against the black dog. Another happy by-product of Lyme. Right now I feel like THE worst mother, friend, wife EVER. I feel like no one could ever love me because I’ve been so absent.

I haven’t been there enough for anyone.

Sorry.

Your inadequate pal, ~LA